


Mirage

by ThisIsNotAProfile



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7810810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisIsNotAProfile/pseuds/ThisIsNotAProfile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The desert. A lone gunman. A Talon supply convoy.</p><p>Somebody’s about to have their day ruined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirage

The drone descended from the depths of the night sky towards Ana’s outstretched hand, the only clues to its presence the way it blocked out the stars on its approach. She caught it just as it switched off, tucking it into a pouch on the small of her back as she took a knee.

Hoverdrive marks. She’d seen them on the drone’s thermal cameras, winding their way through the desert sand like a miles-long snake before bending not a stone’s throw from where she stood. This would be the road, then. For months, Talon supply convoys had been taking advantage of the unrest on both sides of the border to get their goods to their operations throughout Africa. The supplies would enter the port of Tobruk under innocuous names - on the bills of lading, assault rifles would be “canes”, grenades would be “snowglobes”, ammunition would be “hard candy”, and so on and so forth. From there, they would be offloaded to shell companies with forged papers and non-existent agents and sent east through the Sahara into Cairo. From _there_ , they’d go anywhere - either overland into Iraq and Iran, or down the roads into Sudan and the Congo.

It was a good system, if a bit inefficient. Then again, Talon’s reach extended only so far. Its associates were PNG almost worldwide, and it could only bribe so many customs officials and send so many convoys under cover of darkness before its resources became perilously overextended. And so it was a system vulnerable to interference - from professionals, anyway.

She’d had her eyes on this particular convoy for a while, now. Her informants had told her it was carrying a shipment special-ordered by Reyes and Sombra, wherever they were. The paperwork she’d found hadn’t been heavy on details, but if those two wanted it, it only made sense to destroy it.

Placing the transponders on the trucks back in Tobruk had been the easy part. It had only gotten harder from there. She’d had to secure transport across the border, evade checkpoints, and scout out someplace discreet for the ambush - all the while, the convoy was moving, catching up to her.

She flipped open the display on her wrist, covering it with her coat to prevent the light from giving away her position. On the screen, a red dot blinked steadily just east of the Libyan-Egyptian border, a small bubble above it informing her that its speed was 65 kilometers per hour and its bearing 0-9-3. A blue arrow indicated her position - by all indications, in the middle of a featureless desert.

She looked around. It was not an inaccurate description. Aside from some sand dunes lining the road, the closest cover was a steep ridgeline due south of her, jagged rocks rising up into the night sky like the stone fingers of a long-buried god. She let out a soft _hm_ , shutting the display before taking a rangefinder out of the pouch on the small of her back, putting it to her eye, and centering it on the closest peak. Red numbers darted across the screen, going up and down before settling as her hand steadied.

2,500 meters.

She blinked, taking her eye off it and squinting into the distance before returning the rangefinder to her eye. The measurement was the same.

She paused before letting out another _hm_ and returning the rangefinder to its pouch. It was a long shot, even for her. Even at ranges a quarter of that, there were dozens of variables that could affect where the bullet landed - wind, gravity, air temperature, and humidity, just to start. If she went up on the ridge, she’d have to account for dozens more - the mirage effect, the difference in elevation, the angle to the target, the rotation of the Earth itself…

As her thoughts wandered, she palmed the bolt of the rifle in her hand. Her biotic rifle was stashed at a safehouse on the other side of the border - in its stead she held a Komarov, one of the anti-materiel rifles the Russians had been so quick to manufacture during the Omnic Crisis of old. It was easy to find on the black market these days, superseded as it had been by newer, more compact designs. She’d gawped when she’d seen it - it was almost as long as she was tall, and almost 30 pounds when loaded and with a scope attached. But it was all that had been up for the taking, and if it could take out a truck (her informant had assured her it could) then she couldn’t rightly complain. Seated in the chamber now was an 855-grain 12.7 by 108 millimeter cartridge made of a cupronickel jacket surrounding a tungsten carbide core, enough to penetrate 40 millimeters of armor plating at 1,000 meters. Nine more rested in the magazine, one of four she’d brought along with her for the ambush. It would be more than enough for anyone venturing onto roads this remote.

She stroked her chin as she pondered moving along the road, perhaps to a more suitable location. Then she shook her head. Relocating would take too long, and the terrain was too uncertain. It would have to be done right here. It wasn’t perfect - then again, when was it ever? _Ideally_ , she’d be doing this with five others. Three sniper-spotter pairs, spread out to cover the approach - one pair covering the bend in the road, the other two on either side of them. Command-detonated mines would initiate the ambush by taking out the rear and lead vehicles and boxing the others in. From there, it would be a simple matter of picking off the survivors, then moving in to clear the wreckage. And yet, here she was - with no mines, no partners, and no spotter, just a rifle that was bigger and bulkier than it had any right to be.

Still, in other ways this place was as good as any other. The morning air would be hot and dry, minimizing drag on the bullet and reducing the lead she’d need to give her targets. The ridgeline would be too far away for the convoy to effectively return fire, if they ever saw her in the first place. On top of that, the sand off-road was too loose and granular to support the weight of a truck. If any of the drivers panicked and tried to drive around the wrecks, they’d surely get stuck in it. As if to make sure of this, she stooped over and scooped up a handful, watching it slip through the cracks between her fingers.

Yes. Yes, this would do nicely.

She flipped open the display once more, watching the blinking red dot continue to head east towards Cairo. Towards _her_.

90 minutes before dawn. About two and a half hours before the convoy would get here.

All that was left was to hide in plain sight - and wait.

She was good at that.

* * *

She’d settled in on the ridgeline as though she were one of the rocks themselves. It was a long wait, and as the sun inched over the horizon, she allowed herself only the barest of sips from the water bladder she’d stowed under her coat. At three liters, it was woefully inadequate for anything more than a few days, but she’d made it work before. She imagined Angela would be horrified, or at least disappointed - a smile made its way across her face as she imagined the good doctor’s reaction to her sub-par water intake. Still, to travel lightly in the desert, one had to compromise.

She kept her cheek pressed to the stock of the rifle, leaning over it to let her good eye stare down the scope at the road. It was a 40-power piece; enough to make it look like the road was just a little over half a football pitch away. The earth was warming up now. She could see the mirage through the scope, heat waves radiating straight up from the ground. No wind - that was a godsend. The distance alone made the shot hard enough as it was. She wanted to check the transponder again, to see if the convoy was still heading this way, but she dared not move a muscle. Even out here, who knew who was watching?

Movement in her peripheral caught her eye. For a moment, her muscles tensed, her hand squeezing the pistol grip of the rifle. Another burst of movement - it was a lizard, and she relaxed as it came further into view, its tan and brown scales camouflaging it well against the rock.

“Run, little one,” she whispered. “This will be no place for you, soon.”

It cocked its head up at her, regarding her with its bare black eyes before scurrying away and down the ridgeline. Ana let out a breath, turning her attention back to the scope.

She let out two more breaths before movement in the scope drew her attention. It was black and coming up over a rise. She squinted, drawing in another deep breath as it came into view. Five trucks, the convoy - no insignia on them, but she could see Talon personnel through the tint on the windows. Considering “covert” wasn’t Talon’s usual bag, it wasn’t a half-bad attempt.

She pulled back the bolt just enough to see the brass gleaming at her from the chamber, and then pushed it forward once more, settling in for the shot. The buttstock was secure against her shoulder and the scope zeroed in and attuned for elevation and windage. She breathed out, then in again as she did the necessary calculus and trigonometry in her head. At this range, the bullet would be in flight for three full seconds. There would be no room for error.

She squeezed the grip of the rifle, letting her finger rest upon the trigger as she followed the trucks in her scope. They raised clouds of dust in their wake, the spacing between them totally inadequate. They were getting sloppy, rushing to make up for lost time.

They would not need to worry about such things anymore.

Her mouth became dry as the convoy stretched out to approach the bend in the road. She would need to hold a quarter-MOA low to account for the Eötvös Effect, and a half-MOA to the left to account for the Coriolis Effect - at the same time, she would need to lead the trucks, too. They were moving much faster than they were last night, easily 90 kilometers per hour, but she’d need to keep in mind her angle to them as well. Someone lazier would have called it a straight 75 degrees, but the lazy ones didn’t live long.

She let out a final breath and took aim, letting her finger take up the slack in the trigger as the lead vehicle slowed taking the bend in the road.

Count to four. Inhale. Count to four. Exhale.

The rifle boomed as it recoiled, the feeling something like you’d experience startling an irate mule. Already her shooting hand was working the bolt, spent brass glinting in the sunlight as it flew out of the chamber. She sighted in again just in time to see the first round impact the engine block, sending the lead vehicle crashing to the ground in a cloud of sand. She turned the rifle to sight in on the rear vehicle, her trigger finger once more taking up the slack before squeezing it straight to the rear. This one, too, found its mark, and it met a similar fate against the makeshift road. The convoy halted, and the Talon operatives dived out of the cabs, trying to find cover against the trucks. It would do them no good.

She was almost a machine as she burnt through the rest of the magazine - firing and working the bolt, firing and working the bolt, targeting the center of mass. In a panic, some of the operatives tried running away from the convoy, but they could not outrun her bullets. Soon, her first magazine was empty, and she reloaded, setting the spent one to the side before taking a fresh one out from underneath her coat and chambering a round. There were still more left. There was dirty work ahead of her.

The next thirty-three minutes passed her by in something of a blur. Time had little meaning - she discerned the spaces between each shot more on feeling than on any kind of discrete number. Each death was a quick one, a precise one, just as she had been taught, and just as she had taught others. This had been the part of the work she could not bear to let Fareeha see, the part where her targets died alone and afraid, so far from their family and friends. It was necessary, but dirty, and Fareeha had let herself be bought into the glamorous side of the job Overwatch had been so eager to broadcast worldwide. They’d done more than kill Talon, of course, but she’d be lying to herself if she said that hadn’t been an essential part of the job. At the thought of her daughter, she felt a surge of anguish rise up in her breast, one she tamped down just in time to blow another Talon operative onto his back.

When it died down, it did so slowly at first, then all at once.

She swept over the convoy with her scope. No movement. Twenty-four operatives dead on the ground. She let out a long exhale, unpursing her lips and letting the tension out of her muscles. She glanced over to her side - two spent magazines were next to her. She checked the one in her rifle - half-empty. She would have to be careful to avoid trouble on her way to the extraction point.

With a grunt, she got to her feet, stooping down to pick up the empty magazines and tuck them back into her coat before treading off towards the convoy. There were doubtlessly explosives she could rig along the length of the convoy and detonate from a safe distance. That would be more than enough to take care of whatever Sombra had wanted her hands on so badly. Reyes would be furious, of course - she’d be surprised if he didn't organize some kind of manhunt for whoever had done this. But she’d be long gone by then, faded away into the desert sands.

Surviving was what old soldiers were best at, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write about Sniper Mom operating operationally. Works with themes and metaphors and story arcs and all those fancy-pants literary devices will come later.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! Reviews make the heart grow fonder.


End file.
